SO I DON’T WANT TO BE A LAME MOVIE REVIEW CAUSE I HAD TO WRITE THIS REVIEW FOR THIS CLASS BUT MOST OF THIS IS STUFF I DIDN'T WANT TO TURN INTO MY PROFESSOR.

DR. NASH IF YOU'RE READING THIS...

CAN I HAVE EXTRA CREDIT CAUSE THIS IS AN "OUTSIDE CLASS ASSIGNMENT" SOMEWHAT RELATED TO YOUR CLASS

BUT THIS MOVIE IS SO HARD TO EXPLAIN SO PLEASE WATCH IT WHEN YOU CAN. NEVER LET ME GO. CAME OUT IN 2010.

For my class, we had to watch this movie called “Never Let Me Go,” a sci-fi story about humans advances in science. Humans can live up to 200 years, as they created clones as they are predestined” organ donors.” Though that sounds like an astounding advancement in science, we see the perspective of these medical advances through those of the clones. Though sci-fi, the movie details on real life problems about time. Through this article or what every my brain can throw together at 10 pm at night while I have 3 exams next week is about time.

Cause they say “time management,” they say, but doesn’t that work when you know how much time you even have?!?!

I remember when I was young I went to Starbucks (I was about 9) and I wanted to buy something in that “gift shop” section (you know the one with mugs, snacks, and some CDs) with the so cool 20 bucks my mom gave me and I found this book called The Traveler.

One moment as I look up the summary cause I can’t explain it in my own words: (from Amazon) ‘Once, there was a boy named Charlie. He had a pretty nice life.... but it wasn’t perfect. So one day he packed up all his time—all his round, squishy years and square, mushy months, down to every itsy-bitsy second—in his suitcase and locked it up safe, said goodbye to his parents, and set off to find something better to spend his time on. Charlie traveled all over the world in search of the perfect thing to make him happy, but that turned out to be much harder to find than he thought. In the meantime, his itsy bitsy seconds and silky, smooth hours and raggedy days ticked away and vanished, and soon they added up to weeks and months and years—so that once Charlie stopped his traveling and realized what he really needed out of life, it was almost too late. Almost.”

So this boy is like “I want to figure out what to do with my life,” so he packs his “time” which is like jewels which represent years, hours, minutes and travels all over the world but nic picking on all the places saying

“Too many people”

“It’s too cold”

*insert another lame excuse here*

Until he is very old he comes back home and boom. He unpacks his time: BOOM. He has only one year left. With the idea that he knows how much time he has left: he goes and claims what he really wanted the most - the love of his friends and family.

This book reminded me of this movie, but not the plot but the idea of time.

Everyone knew what time they had left and everyone acted accordingly…

Back to the boring part of my movie analysis that I can’t make sound cool: As we look on at the plot movie follows the life story of Kathy, in three main parts. The movie is a flashback, as Kathy in the beginning states “I’m 28… I now spend most of my time not looking forward, but looking back.” We later find out that it is due the fact that her death is near and when one is on their deathbed it is human nature to go back and review on his or her life. This is ironic because we human live now up over 100 and even in our natural world, age 28 is young and at that age, a young woman usually plans on what he life will be in her future. To me, it is even more ironic as we all face death, but the fact that Kathy knows when death will occur or that it will occur soon shows that someone, even young, goes through the similar process of those who will die old.

So in this movie you or whoever will watch this like please do: you meet three Donor children, first when young and then later. They are Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth, played in their 20s by Carey Mulligan, Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley. They were raised at Hailsham, a progressive boarding school for Donors: progressive in the sense that it's an experiment based on the possibility that these test-tube babies are real human beings. Well, of course, they are, we think. But it doesn't suit the convenience of the larger society to think of them in that way. If you are about to get someone's heart, don't you tend to objectify the source? You should. If you get my heart, I don't want you moping around about me. It's your heart. You pay the bills….. JUST MY OPINION THOUGH

The first part of the movie shows Kathy a girl who seems to be a normal human to the audience at the beginning of the movie, she seems like a normal child, and is at boarding school, but see that the children aren’t treated normally as they have rumors of the “outside world” beyond the school gates and though the scene when there was a “token sale” at the school as most of the items were broken toys and what we consider useless junk. We find out that Kathy isn’t a normal girl, but is a clone and raised in a clone boarding school, where at age 10 it is released from Miss Lucy (who wasn’t suppose to tell them) what the children “life purposes” are. As we see this is revealed we see how these clones are born to die.(NOTE: LIKE WOULD THESE PEOPLE ACT THE SAME IF THEY DIDN'T KNOW HOW MUCH TIME THEY HAD LEFT PROBABLY NOOOOOOO)

SORRY FOR THE BREAK I HAD TO POINT THAT OUT...

They have a due date for their death. They live their lives thinking about death in a way that we do not think about. Their deaths are different from ours. The clone’s life is set up for them before they even get a chance at the world. When this shocking fact of this dystopia is revealed, we see how not just Kathy, but the other main characters, Ruth and Tommy, experience romantic love and caregiving differently due to the roles are given to them in the medical program. With romantic love, Kathy’s friend, Ruth, did what might be considered a selfish act (stealing Tommy from Kathy when the two of them easily had a romantic connection with each other), but it doesn't mean she was not right about fearing to end up alone and not loved as she found out that her life will be short lived. We see that Ruth is with Tommy not out of love but out of fear due idea that this might me the only way she can experience romance and love. However, though it seemed selfish, towards in the end of the film she admitted she chose the wrong person to be with and betraying her best friend and taking away Tommy she thought was only for a true love.

We see how being a part of the program affects their caregiving differently, mostly in the second part of the film. The second part of the film focuses on Kathy, Tommy, and Ruth as they live in the cottages and many questions and emotions of the “real world” come to their questioning as they become with the discomfort of what their predestined life outcome will be. They speculate ways to prolong their death, as Rodney and Chrissie (two new clones they met at the cottages) tell stories on how people from their boarding school Hailsham can prolong their life by proving that they are in love and Tommy comes up to Kathy claiming that the gallery is the school's proof, but yet the drop the idea until later in the film. This affects their caregiving as their life becomes this oppressive system of the time. The main idea of the film is that the kids are clones and are used to have their organs harvested for other real humans, bringing to question: What gives us (humans) our dignity so that we can't be used and thrown away like the clones? The concept of what make them less human than we are (which isn’t brought up until the end of the film) can be questionable though the film. This film was not really a romanticization of breaking the rules and your daily regimen. In fact, the kids can not do what they were intended to do anytime they want (nor do they try to get out of the program but other methods ex: running away, suicide, etc) the majority go along with it, letting themselves have their organs harvested and then be disposed of at the time they are supposed to giving to them but the “government.” They are conditioned to believe that them dying for science is their purpose. The idea of accepting one’s fate is a form of heroism.

SORRY FOR RANDOM GIFS (THIS IS OF THE MOVIE... I KNOW YOU WOULDN'T READ ALL OF THIS IF IT WAS ALL TEXT)

The third part of the film the last few months or even days of Ruth, Tommy, and then Kathy, which is what the film focuses most on most is ten years later after they left the cottages. They meet once again and a series of events unfold as Kathy comes again to friendship with Ruth, admits and confirms her love for Tommy, and confront the Madame of the ‘Gallery” of the school to prolong their life, but was later found out that the gallery purpose was only to show that these clones were “human” and had “souls.” We find out that Hailsham was the only one left of its kind which makes us as the watcher question how dehumanizing the other boarding schools could have been and how dehumanizing is this process as we see how almost brainwashed a lot of these clones are, unaware of the real environment they were in. We see how the characters change as they get closer to death: Ruth admits her faults (of stealing Tommy) and tries to redeem herself before her life ends, Tommy, who seems fine at first, has rage (which he is told to kept hidden in the beginning of the film), but he also becomes artistic (in the beginning of the film Miss Lucy told him that art and sport doesn’t matter probably due to the fact he will die young) as he draws and creates art probably due to the fact that his death is soon to come. and then we have Kathy, who accepts the outcome of all this, though graceful, I look at this film and think “Miss Lucy told them their outcome, what would have been their life if she had not told them?” As in the last scene Kathy is looking on a field she states ““I remind myself I was lucky to have had any time with him at all. What I’m not sure about is, if our lives have been no different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we’ve lived through, or feel we’ve had enough time.”

Lame review I know: most of came from my essay draft and I couldn’t make it make sense and sound informal… so this what I’m trying to say.

The desire that this “Kathy” and the boy had in the short story I told you had in telling that death is inevitable and so is the concept of time. That in the end of all our lives (both clone and humans and weird boys who can pack up time) no matter how old or how young we die we want more time. We see that this a painful reality of time and reminds us to live our lives to the fullest, to embrace and accept the love we see in the people around us, and to understand the world we live in and the oppressive system of time.

But I want to point out: DON’T THEY GET IT TOGETHER AFTER HOW MUCH TIME THEY HAVE NO LIKE “YOU’RE GONNA LIVE TILL YOUR 20” BUT LIKE “YOU ONLY HAVE ONE YEAR LEFT” KIND S**T.

I mean they don't go banana, but they don't take charge and do what is "right" until their last moments.

Now I can tell you go “live today as if it is your last.” Or the last three sentences of two paragraphs ago I just wrote (“accept the love we see in the people around us, and to understand the world we live in and the oppressive system of time.)”. But my call to action is no call to action. To be honest I wrote to share with you how scary the concept of time is to me. How we always want more time. More time to be with people, more time to do things, more time to live. The idea that time is so elusive and even more time is a human concept we made. Yes.. I know, “Don’t animals hibernate at the SAME TIME of the year...” Yes, but mean the concept of time that us humans made: months, days, Monday, 11 p.m….. Those dates and times that scare us, or at least scare me. It doesn’t scare me as in a way of “I don’t have enough time,” but in a way of how can such a human created topic and concept take over our lives….

I would like to think about it, but I have a Calculus test to study for, exam week is coming, Wish I could write more but I have to study. Time is running. Like Alice in Wonderland.

Can’t let time get to us can we? I just want to ask one question:

Do we let time take us over because we don’t know how much time we have?

That is the question.